The Flywheel

Holiday Wishes to all you merry Gentlemen & Women!

Gone fishing! No meeting.

Those of us who welcomed Russian architects in 2007
will recognize this face: Prokopy Romanov.

This week Prokopy e-mailed holiday greetings and photos
to his host family, Nick and Nel.

We thought you'd enjoy his image of happiness: ice-fishing
in Siberia.

MEETING OF December 19tH, 2008

A Richmond Rotary Self-Examination

President Mark lead a group conversation on the issues
and opportunities he sees before us. The discussion moved
along these lines:

Our greatest challenge
Why are we having difficulty recruiting and hanging on to
new members? Some possible answers:
- Too great a time commitment is expected
- Costs too much
- We’re not visible in the community; too
much international emphasis
- Have we ignored Richmond’s obvious problems?
- Too much check writing and not enough hands-on-work?

Assets
- Rotary great “franchise”
- Great people
- Good funding opportunities
- A veritable goldmine of social ills. (Pehaps
only Mark could identify this as an asset. ;-) )

Solutions
Will visible, meaningful, and relevant local projects
will attract new membership?
"We don’t need to build another water well
in Nigeria this year; we have enough problems
here in Richmond."

Peace Garden
This is
something tangible that puts
our name before the community. A clean-up day was just organized
by the neighbors themselves, without Rotary participation
involved. That's evidence of a seed that's been planted,
leading to self-sustaining growth.
Does such work get us more positive exposure? Does
it prompt the involvement of new members? New friends? Does
this show us to be more caring and relevant to the community?

Richmond Rotary Peace Project:
In
contrast to our sometimes "shotgun approach" of
many small projects, the Peace Project encompasses
an extensive, year-long engagement of our members with
the local community. How—and when—do we measure its
effectiveness?

FundraisingHow does the club sets funding policy with regard
to what programs we support every year? Our new direction
requires more money than we have been raising.

Is "philanthropic capitalism" an answer?
The Rotary
Wine Club raised $10,000 in sales in the last six months.
Expanding on this, we could pursue wholesale
sales for other clubs, organized around wine tasting events.

The Ghosts of Winehaven event was another
example of "philanthropic capitalism". The
event was fun,
drew on our members' creativity, the community's generosity,
and took advantage of one of Richmond’s
historical assets. (Too soon for a walk down Memory
Lane? Nah.)

We can repeat that model next
year with Ghosts of Shipyard III.

Considering community projects
Jan Brown offered an insightful way of assessing the
year's community projects. Consider each project,
she said, in the light of two criteria:
- Does it build
fellowship?
- Does it create interactions with
those we serve, with the broader community?

Preparing bins of useful articles for Teen Moms

Looking at the past year's community projects, some
satisfy one or the other criteria, while some satisfy
both: Peres School Read Across America, Childspree,
Teen Moms, Peace Garden, Rotary Peace Project (remember,
this has three components).

We raised
funds and donated to many other projects this year, but
this list represents only those in which Rotary members
worked directly in the community.

Community projects and membershp
We have been discussing a second way of
thinking about community projects, mentioned earlier:
Is the project driven only by check-writing, or does
it also require roll-up-your-sleeves efforts to be
successful?

Most projects require a bit of both. But seen through
this lens we may get a different take on the questions
raised at the outset: what do we expect of new members
and why do they decide to stay?

The Club leadership welcomes your feedback on these
ideas, either verbally or in written form. If you want,
e-mail your suggestions and comments to Nick.
He'll compile them, delete those he thinks are nonsense
(just kidding), and post them on our website.

-Meeting notes compiled and edited by Nick Despota

Upcoming Programs

January 2
Toddy today, blended with post-holiday cheer.

January 9
Richmond City Manager Bill Lindsay reports on bright
spots in an otherwise gloomy economy.

Have a suggestion for a speaker?
Please pass along the name and contact information
to Jim Young.